


Bucky Barnes' Metal Arm Is Not A Character (but it is a kink)

by TheoMiller



Series: something bigger [12]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Gen, M/M, Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 16:13:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2276193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheoMiller/pseuds/TheoMiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Tony finally gets his hands on Bucky's arm. Or, Bucky copes with having a disability and the scientists appreciate the terrifying work of engineering that is Bucky's arm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bucky Barnes' Metal Arm Is Not A Character (but it is a kink)

**Author's Note:**

> My computer died and I'm taking college courses, so it's sort of a mess, but I pinkie swear I haven't abandoned this verse!

“I want you evaluated by a doctor,” Steve said, and winced when Bucky stiffened.

“Poked and prodded, you mean,” Bucky spat. “Examined.”

Natasha was at Bucky’s side in an instant, murmuring to him in Russian.

“Natalia,” Bucky said.

She rested a hand on his arm. “Bucky,” she said in English, “You know me. You know Steve. I will not let them harm you. We will not let them harm you. Your days as a lab rat are done.”

“You’ve always been a good liar,” he rasped.

Nat glanced at Steve, who moved to kneel beside her. “I’m a terrible liar,” he said. He looked at Bucky with wide earnest eyes.

“You really are,” said Nat, and shrugged when Steve threw her a look over his shoulder.

“No more experiments, Buck. Just making sure you’re okay. I don’t trust Hydra to have taken good care of you.”

Bucky’s gaze flickered between Natasha and Steve. Then, “House call.”

Steve sat back on his heels. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, we can do that.”

“Coulson’s got a scientist who plays medic, nice enough girl,” said Nat. “I’ll call May, tell her to air-drop the kid in.”

“Why not call Clint?” Steve asked.

“Clint and Phil are busy,” Natasha said.

X-x-X-x-X

“Hi,” Jemma Simmons said.

Bucky rocks back on his heels and grinned at her. It was one of his better days, having spent the night after agreeing to be checked by a doctor watching something called America’s Funniest Videos. (That had resulted in Nat and Bucky wheezing with laughter at someone who decided to jump off a shed onto a trampoline, while Steve tried to act disapproving and not laugh at the same time.) “Ain’t fair for a dame to be smart and pretty,” he said.

“She shot Sitwell with a gun she made herself, you’d better watch yourself,” said Natasha. She was perched on the table’s edge while Steve sat in one of the wooden chairs and pretended to read a novel about a boy wizard.

“Turns out he was Hydra,” Jemma said, “So I rather wish it had been something with a little more kick than the night-night gun.”

“What’s a night-night gun?” Bucky asked, as she herded him towards a scale.

“It’s mine and Fitz’s prototype tranquilizer gun. The pistol holds eight dendrotoxin rounds. Uh, does the arm come off?” she asked.

“No,” Steve said, at the same time that Bucky said, “Yeah.”

She looked between the two men for a moment, and then turned to Natasha. “It hurts Bucky to remove it,” the assassin explained.

“Oh!” said Jemma. “I have a local anesthetic and a non-drowsy modified morphine shot. I just need to weigh it, and send the specs back to Fitz, and see if we can’t make it a bit more comfortable. If you’d rather we not, that’s all right, I can get a fair estimate given your stature and muscle density?” she directed all of this at Bucky, who looked a little overwhelmed.

“It’s uncomfortable?” Steve said to Bucky, who ignored him.

“Well, unless the plating is made of a vibranium-aluminium alloy, and all the inner workings are made with an ultralight polymer of some sort, and the shoulder blade is reinforced somehow…” Jemma trailed off, apparently realizing Bucky hadn’t told Steve about the arm’s problems.

“Dammit, Rogers, stop looking like I kicked your puppy!” snapped Bucky.

Jemma withdrew to hover a little behind Natasha as Steve drew himself to his rather impressive full height. “You’re deliberately hurting yourself by not telling us when you’re in pain, Bucky, I have a right to be upset!”

“It beats being a goddamn cripple.”

“This is every bit as ridiculous as if I were to refuse to take my inhaler back before the serum, you need to—”

Natasha leaned over and murmured in Jemma’s ear, “He believes he deserves pain because of what Hydra did to him. It’s going to complicate treatment.”

And then Jemma’s back went ramrod straight, and she took a deep breath, and muttered be assertive to herself. She stalked over to the quarreling supersoldiers, heart thumping in her chest, and shoved at Steve. He didn’t move, not as a result of her, but he did notice and step back. “Now,” she said, turning to Bucky. “Do you consent to me removing your prosthetic arm?”

Steve watched with bated breath. Bucky nodded.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay, do you want the local anesthetic, the morphine, or both?”

“Whatever,” shrugged Bucky.

Jemma’s eyes narrowed. “Both, then.”

Nat herded Bucky into one of the kitchen chairs.

She pulled a patch out of her kit and peeled off the backing. “When I apply this to your skin, the morphine will enter your bloodstream. You may feel like your blood is running cold, that’s normal. Okay?”

Bucky nodded. The morphine did work quickly, but Jemma was frowning. “Steve, what’s his metabolism like?” She said.

“Almost as fast as mine.”

Three more patches went on, with Jemma asking if he was ready before each. When Bucky was loose and relaxed from the morphine, blinking owlishly at her, she held up the syringe of lidocaine. “Deep breath for me, and then I’m gonna poke you with this needle, and then we’ll be done. Okay?”

Steve hovered by his shoulder, ready to restrain him should the needle trigger any memories, but Bucky remained calm.

“All right,” said Jemma. “Now we remove the arm.”

Bucky slid open a panel on the arm and pressed a button. With a few whirs and clicks, the arm came away, and Jemma caught it. “Oh,” she said, “it’s pretty heavy. We should see about a microlattice shell with Kevlar matched to your skintone, or maybe that aluminium alloy…” she broke off. “Sorry, I should check your shoulder. How’s the medicine holding up, Sergeant?”

“It’s almost out of my system,” Bucky said.

“Let me know if the discomfort gets above a 3 on the pain scale, all right?” She set the arm aside and examined the scarred curve of shoulder. “Okay, so… It looks like your entire socket joint was replaced, and the nervous system access came in through… oh, that’s barbaric, surely a few nodes would pass the electrical impulses along sufficiently!”

“What?” asked Steve.

“See these?” Jemma said, pointing at wires that ended in barbs, “They dig into his skin here, here, and here to tap into the nervous system, which lets him control it like a normal limb. And these bigger ones, they attach to the bones.”

“Hydra,” Nat said distastefully. Both Jemma and Steve repeated the word on a snarl.

“I’m going to put some disinfectant here,” Jemma said, wrinkling her nose at the punctures in the skin. “Did they cauterize these every time they removed the arm to update it?”

“Yes,” said Bucky.

Steve’s hand tightened on Bucky’s uninjured shoulder.

Jemma daubed disinfectant gel on the pinkish blots, and then sat back. Her jaw clenched, unclenched, and she sighed. “I need to take a look at the internal structures. Is it okay if I x-ray you?”

Bucky nodded.

She held up a handheld scanner and flipped it on. “Okay,” she said, holding it a few inches away from his chest. “Looks like you shattered your clavicle, see these nicks to the ribs here and here, the ones that’ve been reinforced with metal plating? It’s been replaced, and that attaches to the nodules on the arm.”

“I want Fitz flown to Stark,” Natasha said, her tone and eyes steely. “You can go along to advise them on making it interact with the biology, but I want the best technical minds working on designing a new arm.”

“I, uh, actually need to talk to you,” Jemma said. “Hill wanted me to pass along a message and, well… I’ll let Fitz know, and then we can talk, okay?”

X-x-X-x-X

“I’m so glad you asked,” Tony said, when Steve called to ask - because it was polite to ask Tony to build things, rather than tell him to. He still felt a little bit bad about letting Natasha order people around, because Natasha was the sort of person even Tony Stark obeys, but Tony sounded downright enthusiastic about getting his hands on Bucky’s arm. “No, seriously, it’s about time. Wanna send your shield along too?”

Steve glanced at his shield where it was laid next to the cabin’s door and quickly said, “Ah, no, thank you.”

“Suit yourself,” Tony said. “Can we keep the metallic plating? It’s very cool and very functional.”

“Buck,” Steve said.

Bucky lifted his head.

“How do you feel about keeping the metallic design?”

“I’m… used to it,” he said. “So yes.”

“You can keep the plating,” Steve relayed to Tony, and rolled his eyes when the engineer whooped and called to Bruce.

X-x-X-x-X

Coulson was flanked by a black man and a young woman, who grinned at Jemma. “Coulson finally resurfaced,” she said, and Coulson spared her a quelling look.

“Natasha, Steve, Bucky - these are agents Triplett, and Skye,” said Coulson.

“Antoine Triplett,” Tripp said to Steve, holding out a hand with a faint tremor to it. “I think you knew my granddad, Gabriel Jones.”

Natasha brushed her knuckles down Steve’s spine soothingly as he stared at Tripp. “It’s nice to meet you,” Steve managed, and shook Tripp’s hand with both of his.

“Antoine’s agreed to help rebuild SHIELD,” said Coulson. “He’s been a good friend to all of us, when we needed it most. Listen, I hate to interrupt, but—” he broke off, because a certain archer practically tackled him, grumbling about Coulson leaving bed early.

“Get a room,” Natasha and Skye said in perfect unison.

“Sorry,” said Steve to Tripp. “They’re going to be like that for a while.”

Tripp grinned. “Yeah, you should’ve heard the boss talk. ‘Clint says’, ‘this one time Clint’, ‘Hawkeye’s approval ratings are down, why are they down?’”

Bucky was still hovering silently, but he stepped forward. “You’re Gabe’s grandson,” he said.

“That I am,” Tripp said. “And you’re not dead.”

“No,” agreed Bucky. They regarded each other for a moment, wherein Steve half-expected Bucky to have a flashback, but he just nodded to himself and offered his good hand to him. Tripp shook it.

“Huh,” said Tripp. “Okay. Skye,” he said, “Can you separate Coulson and Barton?”

“Easier said than done,” Natasha told him. “I’m going to go find May. Jemma, get back to your partner with that arm.”

“Well,” Tripp said. “It was nice to meet you guys. Cap, Sarge, if you ever need anything, let me know. And, uh, if you could not mention to anyone who my granddad was, that’d be good,” he added.

Steve frowned, but Bucky agreed quietly.

“C’mon, AC, you still gotta introduce me to your boyfriend, you can’t do that if you’re busy making out with him the whole time he’s here,” Skye was saying.

“Hi,” Clint said, “I’m Hawkeye. Nice to meet you. Can I get back to—” he broke off, because Bucky had picked him up like a kitten and dropped him on his feet.

“You’re going to traumatize all of SHIELD,” Bucky said, though he sounded amused.

Coulson was on his feet, dusting himself off, within seconds of Clint being forcibly removed. Skye wolf-whistled.

“The ‘not at work’ rule is being reinstated,” he told Clint, and she snickered.

X-x-X-x-X

“I’m synthesizing vibranium as we speak,” Tony said, with a lazy wave of his hand. “Borrowed some Asgardian tech.”

“Is that a photoelectron spectroscope over there, with the mass spectrometer?” Fitz asked.

Bruce nodded. “There’s a spectrophotometer, too. We do grade school level nostalgia experiments when we’re waiting on results, you should join us sometime.”

Fitz leaned into Simmons’ side, and she stroked his hair. “We’d love to,” she said. “So. You’re synthesizing an element from scratch using alien technology?”

“Come see!”

X-x-X-x-X

“Dammit,” Bucky huffed, staring up at the cabin’s ceiling. Natasha poked her head into his line of vision, smirking, and offered him a hand. “Okay. What were you saying about using my legs?” he said, as he let Natasha help him up, directing it to the webcam hooked up to the television screen, which showed an unimpressed Melinda May watching them.

“Next time Natasha immobilizes your arm like that, jump up and wrap your legs around her waist. You’re not as light as she is, and you need to use that to your advantage,” May said.

“And, since I can’t hold your weight and immobilize your arm, at least not for very long, I have to let go of your arm to roll with you.”

Bucky charged at her suddenly, knife at the ready, but she dodged the first swipe of the blade easily, and caught his arm while it was extended. He’d usually just drop the knife and catch it with the other hand, but… Bucky did his best to replicate the move she used when she jumped up to strangle people with her thighs, only for Natasha to drop, yanking his arm at a strange angle, and flip him sideways.

He rolled away as soon as he hit the ground, and Natasha remained in a tense crouch. “It defeats the purpose if you don’t let my try out these ridiculous moves,” Bucky snapped, standing.

“You need to learn to fight without the arm, Barnes. At this point, even Barton could beat you in hand-to-hand without your arm. And he’s a goddamn sniper.”

“Oh, come on, he’s an archer, don’t tell me he doesn’t end up having to fight hand-to-hand more often than not.”

“Yes, he does, and I end up using guns more often than not, even though I’m trained in more personal assassinations. Come on, Barnes.”

“Mind if I cut in?” Steve asked quietly, and Natasha stepped aside, rolling her eyes at the webcam. “Want to show me what May’s been teaching you?”

“Fine,” Bucky said.

Steve sidestepped the knife the first few times, shield still slung over his shoulder, and then Bucky ran at him, using his armless shoulder as a battering ram against the shield. Steve shoved back with the shield, and Bucky swept his leg around to jab the back of Steve’s knee with his heel, bringing them both crashing to the ground.

“Damn,” said Steve, without any real feeling to it, and rolled them so that he could pin Bucky to the ground with the edge of his shield against his throat. Bucky rolled them again, freeing his arm, and when Steve pushed back, pinning Bucky back to the mat again with the weight of Steve over him, he found a serrated blade pressing against his Adam’s apple.

Bucky grinned, sharp and wicked. “Shield or knife, which do you think kills faster?” he rasped.

Steve sighed and flopped to the mat beside Bucky. “I might’ve underestimated your teaching abilities, May.”

“Or maybe you’re just terrible at fightin’,” said Bucky.

“Uh-huh,” Steve said. “Two outta three?”

Bucky sprang to his feet and offered Steve his hand. “Two outta three.”

 


End file.
